Armenia: Attitudes Toward Turks Slowly Changing

Tsitsernakaberd, the Armenian genocide memorial complex in Yerevan. Turkey holds a huge place in the Armenian imagination, mainly as the perpetrator of the 1915 genocide, but attitudes on both sides of the Armenian-Turkish border are changing for the better. (Photo: Carsten ten Brink via Flickr, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

When Üfük Özden, a translator from Istanbul, visited Armenia last year, it was with some trepidation. But when a taxi driver in Yerevan asked him where he was from, he screwed up his courage and acknowledged that he was Turkish.

“I clearly remember his face getting dark for a brief moment,” Özden told EurasiaNet.org. “But he was still helpful and gave me some directions to find the art gallery that I was looking for.” On his way out of the country, the officer at immigration, seeing that he was from Turkey, asked him if he was a member of ISIS. “But I think he was merely joking.”

Turkey holds a huge place in the Armenian imagination, mainly as the perpetrator of the 1915 genocide that devastated the Armenian people, and which the Turkish government still refuses to acknowledge.

Armenia: Attitudes Toward Turks Slowly Changing

Tsitsernakaberd, the Armenian genocide memorial complex in Yerevan. Turkey holds a huge place in the Armenian imagination, mainly as the perpetrator of the 1915 genocide, but attitudes on both sides of the Armenian-Turkish border are changing for the better. (Photo: Carsten ten Brink via Flickr, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)